Lakes Boil: Ubisoft And EA To Sell Each Others Games

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Everything is topsy-turvy. Up is left, down is blue. Ubisoft have just announced that they’re to start selling third-party games on their online store, Uplay. (Which could mark the first time anyone has ever looked at the online store, Uplay.) And even more peculiar, they’re also going to start selling their own games via EA’s Origin download service. Do words and numbers even have meaning any more?

In what one can only assume is a concerted effort to try to put up a fight against Steam, it’s quite the sight to see rival publishers coming together like this. It’s a bit like in Roger Rabbit when there are Disney and Warner cartoons interacting.

So on the offchance that the Origin servers are online, you’ll be able to buy Assassin’s Creed III and Far Cry 3 over there. While you’ll also be able to order SimCity Online (as EA have forgotten to call it) and Dead Space 3 on Uplay. Why? BECAUSE YOU JUST CAN!

If you spend £17 or more on Uplay, in frenzied excitement at this news, you can grab yourself a free copy of either Driver San Francisco, From Dust, Might & Magic Heroes VI, Rayman Origins, The Settlers 7 or World in Conflict, until the 4th March.

Yeah, that. Ideally, I don’t want to be bound to any individual client (and that includes Steam). Ideally, the online backend is completely decoupled from the client software. Use Steam to download and play uPlay games, use Origin to download and play GOG games, etc.

I’d love to see some actual competition like that.

Imagine if I could choose to buy games from the best store, without worrying about having to install Yet Another Client, and I could use my favorite client to play *all* my games, regardless of where I bought them.

No, I think not. Tell that to every government privatisation that has happened in the UK. In the majority of instances opening monopolies to market forces only got more confusing and more expensive for the consumer while the only real benefit was fat cats getting fatter off the profits while services suffered and jobs were lost due to the lack of investment spending.

Steam IS a monopoly, but so far they’re being very good to us gamers, despite their horrible client. If you’re cheering because the twin demons of Ubisoft and EA are here to rescue us you really need to sit down and rethink.

Steam doesn’t have a true monopoly at any rate. It is, however, likely to be the biggest player in the digital game sales market.

Since I’m not a proponent of Steam and similar services (oh yes, I use Steam. I just prefer GOG and Gamersgate and the like) I am mostly neutral about this. I don’t mind more competition in this market, I just hope it doesn’t negatively affect the potential for games to show up on GOG and the like.

I actually dislike Steam intensely. I hate having my hand held by their poxy, obtrusive client. I still use them, though. but I have a healthy stock of games through GoG, Gamersgate and other places. EA and Ubisoft can take a running, jump, though.

I think the Ubisoft/EA client will have make more fundamental changes than this before it’s any competition for Steam. Ubi has a history of obtrusive DRM, and EA has a history of pushing customers towards new titles at the expense of their existing catalog. I’ll take a look once those reputations have changed.

Perhaps you should be engaging the brain, Advanced Assault Hippo: this is not necessarily good for anyone. EA and Ubisoft, two companies with legendary reputations for abusing customers come together and you sit up and applaud this as a welcome development? If you can describe precisely what’s wrong with having a largely benevolent monoploy in place without resorting to fear of the future then we might have an actual conversation. As it is, there’s nothing here to celebrate.

Wow, people offend easily these days. It was a play on the “no-brainer” comment, i.e: “something requiring little or no thought”. That YOU said. No offence was meant.

Protip: if you’re taking offence from insults you consider childish you really should seriously reconsider being on the Internet. But thanks for telling me I look like a dick. Way to show me how to rise above that sort of childishness, you protip master you..

Only problem with this is the fact that Origin and Uplay can’t offer you almost anything worth mentioning that Steam already doesn’t have. And they are doing almost nothing to improve. OK, Uplay is quite new, but Origin has been around for quite some time. And best they can do is exclusive games of questionable quality with to much DLC that costs way too much. While Steam is improving and adding new features probably faster then ever before.

So what kind of a competition is that? For all I care Steam still holds the monopole. And by looking at the competitors I’m glad they are.

Then why are you even here? Not one of those clients can offer you anything…

Also its funny you only blame Steam for holding games hostage. So their publishers wanting their games to have some kind of DRM has nothing to do with it. And I guess StarForce and SecuROM offer you way better experience than Steam ;)

I highly doubt it. Competition is all fine and dandy in a monopolized market. But, i am afraid, what we will get from this venture is more of what we may already dislike in regards to steam, and less of what we like about in it. Call it “competition” all you want.

No good can come from those two, both of them together… we will just get the worse squared(tm).

I am comparing of course, certainly not putting them on the same level. While Steam gets me cautiously optimistic, Origin or U-Play gets me “depressively” realistic.

Main plus in Steam service, is that it leaves it to the developer to enforce or not Steam client usage to run the game, I am yet to see one example on the side of the other services, or at least an example that matters to me as a gamer.

with Alice: Madness Returns you can completely uninstall Origin once you are done registering it, but it was (I think) the first game to launch with Origin and under some weird ownership system between EA and Spicy Horse … other titles since then are more stringent with requiring Origin, but most all of them have multiplayer of some kind vs A:MR having none at all.

Totally agree. I rather see a three party market then a one party market. Even if it’s annoying to have more then one account, competition in a market mostly based on government protection is always good.

Are you fucking daft? Thats exactly what EA is doing with Origin, whereas Valve has only done it with their own games to some extent. And they’re not a monolithic publisher, they’re simply a developer.
So I shall ask: are you daft? Like, seriously? ‘

That’s not funny, its just true. EA were democratically elected the most evil company in America. Even if the vote was hideously biased and done for the LULZ, there is no billowing tempest of life-choking smoke without towering cyclone of flesh scorching fire. Both of which one can experience by writing something mildly rude on the EA forums.

We are talking about a company who wanted to perma ban you from all your games for not reporting every single bug you ever saw or even heard of in a beta. EA are evil. Anyone by comparison looks saintly.

I’m sorry, but citing a vote, saying that it was for the lulz and hideously biased, and then saying it’s still a sign of something is a terrible argument. As is trying to discern malicious intent from a worst-case reading of a EULA, of all places (Hanlon’s razor and such).

And note that I disagree with the argument, not necessarily with the premise (for the interested, my stance on EA is somewhere between “eh” and “I don’t like some of the things they do”).

This is an internet gaming site, not the Cambridge University Debating Chamber. There’s not a little man with a scoreboard totting up the amount of Ad Hominems, Ipso Factos or Milli Vanilli’s. I think what I am saying is, I couldn’t give a rotting monkeys cock what you think of my argument, so go outside, put down your copy of The Use and Abuse of Logic, and for heavens sake clean your teeth. People aren’t avoiding you out of fear of your intellect.

To be fair, I didn’t point out any fallacies in your argument or anything so formal, I just said it was dumb (albeit in far more words and with some explanation). For comparison, I could use the exact same arguments to say that Kim Jong Un has a secret wellspring of public support in the West, and that any number of companies take your money and don’t give you anything in return all the time.

I suppose you could not care that I think what you said was dumb and/or unjustified, but eh? Discussion is rather boring if you take that route (then again, the Internet, amirite?).

Mostly t-shirts, jeans, and hoodies, actually. Some more formal stuff for when the situation calls for it, which isn’t often at my current job. No tweed or math jokes, unfortunately, but I probably have a tartan-ish dress shirt or two. Oh, and socks. Can’t forget the socks.

Are you too, daft? These games arent exclusively sold on Steam in any way, nor are they really exclusive to steam per-say, they may have features exclusive to Steam, or mandatory Steamworks, but thats not Valves choice, its the fucking developers’. So in no way is it evil, sure it may or may not be stupidity from the devs (although Steamworks is glorious and a treat for both players and devs), but again, its not Steam, or Valve for that matter, paying for exclusivity, as per Sony, Microsoft and in a way, EA. – More often than not, “Steam Exclusive” refers to features such as the obvious Steamworks support more often than not, and sometimes preorder-stuff.
So again, you’re not too bright, friend.

If we’re talking featuresets, if devs choose to launch using Steamworks that’s their prerogative. Valve isn’t forcing Jack-all on anyone, Steamworks just offers the best the best community system available. That’s not an indictment of Valve, it’s an indictment of how BADLY everyone else has dropped the freaking ball. Starting with MS and moving on from there.

And if we’re talking games that are only available on Steam at the moment, well first off you’re going to have to point those out. THEN you’re going to have to show me what exactly it is that Valve did that FORCED these companies to release on Steam alone. Because as far as I can see, that decision is typically because Valve are easier to work with than the competition have been (c.f. MS certification) and are the current market leader as a platform.

I actually find the most tempting thing about game pricing these days is the, what I’m assuming, steam keys being sold on GMG for really low prices that they have purchased from other territories. And they can be comboed with their voucher codes.

I like that, too. It’s how I got the BL2 season pass and few other things at a great discount, considering they had just released.

Trouble is, my credit card got flagged as potentially compromised the last time I used it on GMG. So from now on, if they won’t allow PayPal, I’ll avoid the purchase there. Seems to work sometimes and not others.

The thing about the gambling site is crap. I phoned my bank when GMG cocked up a payment and they said there was no ‘gambling’ flag as I had been told – GMG had just failed to take a fully authorised payment, and continued to ignore it for a week. The payment lapsed and I just cancelled my account with them – I do not appreciate being left hanging without customer support, and then being lied to.

IMO they do this because they do not have enough keys to back up the ridiculous offers they put on, but need something to blame it on – hence the gambling site rubbish they tell everyone. They have a track record of making people wait up to a month for keys (check their forums) because of this exact reason. Your card was probably flagged as compromised because of their dodgy billing practices.

Technically, the publisher can decide whether the exe will launch the program directly or through the Steam API. That’s why some games work when you launch them directly and some games need the Steam client running. But it’s up to the publisher either way.

But yeah, in general people don’t want 4 game clients running at the same time. Activision got around the problem rather nicely by integrating the entire client into the game, so maybe that’s what the Steam and Origin of the future will look like.

Because they all want oh so badly to load on startup and sit there in your taskbar UNOBTRUSIVELY just in case you might NEED something from them, and they can help you manage your games library, and help you decide what games to buy, and help you and help you and help you until you want to scream. And sometimes after you disable all of that helpfulness there will be a client update and oops, there it is in that taskbar again. But that’s just because it loves you, and cares too much about your PC experience to stand by and let you pass up this great sale on Dead Space 3. And eventually you just succumb to the help, because it’s easier.

And then you notice that you’re spending a lot of time playing games on your phone these days, and you can’t really explain why that is. But the thought of playing a PC game is just kind of draining right now and there’s something in the app store called Temple Bobble that looks interesting, so you decide to give that a spin instead.

Only games that use Origin’s DRM will require Origin when running, but being sold on Origin =\= using Origin’s DRM system. all of the third party titles on Origin that have their own DRM, use their own DRM (even if it is steam), and none of them require Origin to be running to play; I assume that the same will go for Ubisoft’s titles on Origin and highly doubt that they will bother injecting Uplay into other people’s games (unless paid to do so).

Yup, but that’s because Steam insists on running whenever you opt to play a game. Origin doesn’t require you to even have it installed to play Origin bought games, UPlay games can run without U-play, but you won’t have access to any of the online elements or cloud.

I doubt you will need to run Orign to run Uplay games.
As Origin already allow you to run their own games that don’t use … EAworks or Originworks or whatever they call it, to be run without origin running.

Hush now, he just called the publishers of Crysis, Battlefield, AC3, Far Cry 3, and the most expensive MMO in history (despite it sucking, EA made one hell of a commitment to PC gamming when they signed the check for TOR) “console centric” … arguing logic is probably just pissing pennies into the ocean

Console inclined perhaps, but I atribute that more to unites sold than personal interest since all of those games far out perform their console counterparts on the PC. Compair that to the garbage ports Bethshitia, Take Two, and Square Eidos put out … or the drunken bum vomit that was Darksiders on the PC.

Well, its blindingly obvious that you have an inclination towards them yourself, and some sort of hatred towards Valve and Steam for some ridiculous reason, I assume. And really, AC has never been *great*, some of the games were purely bland (the first was just boring, bad. Tedious.), and Battlefield 3 isnt really very good compared to the older games, and its now slated to become a near-annual game, much like CoD. And it doesnt matter how much money they injected into SWToR, it was still quite a shitty game. So in that case its their own stupidity at work, really. And Bethesda have created some great games themselves, and has always given extra bells and whistles for the PC, so again, ridiculous hatred for no apparent, logical reason. (Your personal dislike doesnt give you the right to call them outright shit, either. So in my opinion, you’re a prick. A brat. Nothing short of it.) – – Also, PC sales are about the very same, if not more, than any given console. (Consoles arent one unit, mind you. So please get your head out of your arse)
Oh and please stop spreading bullshit, false rumours. You’re ignorant, thus you shouldnt be preaching. At all.

EA was probably regretting signing that TOR check by about halfway through its development time (2009-ish), but by then they had passed the point of no return. Remember they injected all that money back when the PC-based client-server MMO was The Next Big Thing.

Ah, bout mouton – – Reading this guys’ other comments, and this comment, reveals as much.
He somehow thinks Valve is the reasoning behind everything thats bad about the industry, and that EA and Ubi are glorious saviors. (I do quite like Ubi, especially the Ubi-of-late, but EA? They’re getting more and more rotten.)

Basically my view. Which is why it’s troubling to me. As it stands EA are trying to pull up the blanket price of PC games to £40 to be the same as the console versions.

If it wasn’t for that, Crysis 3 would have probably been my first Origin game, or at least strongly in the running for it.. At £40 though I figure it can wait, especially since all the reviews I’m seeing mention a fairly short play length (and I’m not going to be bothering with the MP).

Exactly my thought. It’s interesting to me that WB is teaming up with Uplay as well, given their abysmal track record regarding digital competition I’d be surprised if this move ends up being a positive thing.

The reason I’ve got games from GreenManGaming.com and Gamefly.com, and zero from Origin, isn’t because I hate EA and it’s not because of some “Gabe Ghetto”. It’s because of pricing. And like I said previously, it’s pretty evidently EA’s intent to raise the price of PC games to match the console prices, even though they not only do not have to pay a platform holder, but they even own the store.

That’s profit margins WAY above a standard store-bought console release, and then an extra £10 of almost pure profit on top of that, per unit, compared to console releases.

I already pay enough for PC hardware, well in excess of any console, no doubt. But part of the benefit of that is meant to be that I’m not paying extra on software to subsidise those hardware costs.

It’s not a question of Steam competing with EA that I’m concerned about. It’s EA competing with Steam (or even Amazon or other 3rd parties), particularly with pricing. Because if they become the dominant players, their current behaviour suggests I end up spending more for my games, not less.

I’m happy for competition. I’m happy that GreenManGaming’s around, I love GOG.com, and heck, even Amazon can frequently give Steam a run for its money. But EA? Getting me to like their store is going to take a LOT more effort than they’re currently displaying. Particularly when they’re teaming up with Ubisoft (of all companies) to do it.

And all this is without even touching on aspects like community systems, where both of them are way behind.

That was the case when Origin remained in the EA sphere. By branching onto other publishers, they enter the field where the price and featureset competition can actually take place. Now, I agree that they still have a lot to do and, knowing EA, there is no guarantee anything good will come out of it. But the pro-competition trend is there and I welcome it.

Competition is good, especially as one day Gabe Newell will die and Valve will instantly become a normal company run by suits. However, EA doesn’t really indulge in anything fair so they’ll find a way to turn it into a bad thing.

At least Windows store/marketplace/Live/Xbox (or whatever the hell it’s called this week) is getting squeezed out of the picture completely. Hopefully MS will die altogether. (Currently experience major GFWL techincal problems)

Meh. As much as I think a little competition doesn’t hurt I must still say that this won’t change a thing for me.

I’m already not too fond of the Steam client, but I can accept it more or less. But I’ll be damned if I have to install another client just to play games. EA and Ubisoft are trying to exand into an ecological niche that has long been filled by Steam. Even if they were as good as Steam (which IMHO they are really, REALLY not), I would not be tempted to use their ‘service’ at all. They’d have to do better by a magnitude so large that’d I’d drop Steam completely and switch to their distribution. And – in all honesty – I don’t see that happening in the near future.

So, this leaves me exactly where I was before – not buying any games from Origin or Uplay.

I remember I bough far cry 1 from them back in 2008. This article reminded me to log in to ubi.com so I could download that gem again. LOL I DONT OWN IT BUT I CAN BUY IT AGAIN FOR 10 DOLLARS!

I did back it up on a CD but dont buy stuff on this shit service. It wont be there in 5 years.

Competition? Great, but one side of the competition is considering making steam an API (giving up ownership of their store) and this side is basically having a SEGREGATED merger (one store in 2 does not make a good market plan.)

The one major problem I still have with these digital distribution clients is the following:

They still require me to have x different accounts and x different clients running the same time which all want to fiddle with my games with different overlays and the like. I then have to prioritize which one gets the overlay, friend notifications etc.

I would love to see that they introduce a unified login and client which allows me to login into all clients under one roof, to access all stores from it and see/chat with all my friends with it, being it that they use uplay, Origin or Steam (or whatever).
Until then using different digital distribution stores at the same time will always be a pain in the ass and most people will simply stay where their games and friends are. Steam.

This “cross-sales” agreement is a step into the right direction, now please EA and Ubisoft, work towards a unified client and account management. (And dont use Facebook or Google for fucks sake!)

Hmm… I guess more places to buy games is always good.
My only gripe is that between all these applications, why do I have to launch them when I want to play a single player game by myself. I’m sure you know I bought the game from you, why do I have to wait for you to launch (and often update, adding to the frustration) before I can play?
GOG is nice for that. No fuss.

This may be a good thing. IF Ubi can make Ea go away from the “always online” model. Ubi’s done a lot of learning in that department, curbing itself to a “1-time” Internet activation required for most titles.

I don’t mind Origin Per se, I bought Dragon Age1 Ultimate from it, and i can play that without needing to Run Origin. It can also be easily tweaked to never turn on unless I ask it to, which is nice.

But, EA in general is pushing this “always-online-games-as-a-service” perty line, which disgusts me, and I don’t really want anything to do with that.

So if Ubi is the ringleader, this may be good. If EA is the initiative behind the project, this is bad.

Ah EA, I disdain everything you do. Remember when they said they didn’t want a 3rd party taking a piece of their pie; the so called justification for removing their games from steam? Yeah and now they are doing just that again. EA represents a corporate husk that only lives to feed on the flesh of the gaming industry.

But it’s impressive that steam is that significant of a treat to them to have two huge publishers band against them, albeit the two slimiest ones.

I’ve never wanted to buy anything from uPlay or Origin because they are shitty services. Crosspollinating each other doesn’t change that they are shitty services. But publishers exclusively selling their own games at their own digital store is bad for consumers and I generally speaking approve of this sort of move.

I am not exclusively loyal to Steam. I also spend quite a bit on GoG.com, and occasionally Desura and Impulse and Blizzard’s store and The Humble Bundles and direct-to-Indie-developer and (SIGH) even the Games For Windows store thingy for things that are somehow fucking GFWL exclusive but I’m willing to buy them anyway. But I do not like UPlay, and I do not like Origin.

How many Linux games are there on UPlay and Origin?

How many projects I’ve already backed on Kickstarter are going to be on Steam?

And isn’t Gabe Newell working on distinguishing the Steam Store(s) from Valve as a company, while UPlay and Origin are doing the opposite?

And, gee, I already have over 800 games on Steam, and so many more come out every month that I just don’t need anything more than Steam, GoG, Desura, Impulse, Blizzard’s store, The Humble Bundles, paying direct-to-Indie, and (SIGH) fucking GFWL.

People are saying this is good for competition etc but it remains to be seen if they will actually bother to compete with each other, or just accept each others pricing.

Remember the main excuse for high online prices is that its publisher set (both of these distribution services owned by publisher) and linked to retail releases (still happening), i know this is bollocks, you know this is bollocks but its still what they say. I will be impressed if I see them actually compete on price/extras for the sales of each others items.

[EDIT] Also the assumed reason for the fallout between EA and Valve started with valve refusing to give up loads of user data on who had bought EA products apparently, remember all the stuff about properly connecting with the customers? Unless that was actually BS it could imply that ubisoft et all are handing over a bunch of extra info that valve were not willing to.